Body of Confessions: Big Legs, Tight Skirt

Salaam,

I meant for this to be a series, but residency took a bite out of my life yet again and I got behind. This is the next installment of Body of Confessions, to follow the first in the series, "Long Hair."



I think other people have always admired my legs more than I have admired them myself.

Well, not always. There was the preschool ballet instructor who told my mother that I could not succeed in ballet because "[my] things are too big." My mother didn't tell me that until years later. I thought I stopped ballet because I was no longer interested. News to me.

I didn't have a distinct Neruda ritual de mis piernas moment. It all happened gradually after my legs took a very different shape after puberty. Prior to puberty, I was an obese kid with a big belly and smaller, but chunky legs supporting my frame. As puberty commenced, the fat in my body shifted somewhat, but it wasn't until I lost some of that weight of childhood that my legs came out on top.

Well, more than just my legs--my backside, my hips, and my thighs. I don't think I was ever aware of them myself; my mother made me aware.

"You need to cover them legs. They could stop traffic!" That was how my mother told me that I had pretty legs. That they were a distraction and needed to be covered, for modesty's sake. Though modesty, in this case, was painted through the lens of causing male distraction. As soon as I was pubertal, my mother no longer allowed me to wear shorts and instead sewed her own culottes for me to wear.

My mother had an odd set of norms for modesty that I think harkened back more to Nation of Islam's clothing requirements for women. She held tight to "below the knee" as if that were a definitive thing even though in her own time she wore full hijab.

As I got older and defined my own sense of modesty, my legs became a focal point. Maybe it was better for me not to wear tight pants like the other girls, I thought to myself in high school. Because my thighs were so much bigger than my calves, tight pants made my legs look like chicken drumsticks. It took me several years to realize that I couldn't properly wear a belt because the ratio of my behind to my waist was too much for any low-rise jeans. And even in times when I wasn't a hijabi or otherwise particularly concerned about modesty, I felt my legs were never meant for shorts. My thighs would rub together and cause them to ride up in the middle, which was almost as unattractive as having to tug at the inner hem all day long.

"I don't know how...women can wear those canvas panties," my mother would often lament.

I was never comfortable with my big booty, hips and thighs.

It didn't help that my mother's prophecy came true. From the ages of 18 to 20, while walking in jeans and a t-shirt along my college campus, I did more than turn heads. Men of all ages (usually not students) would stop what they were doing and look, wave, cat call, you name it. Just walking from class to the bookstore, I could count on being hit on at least 2 or 3 times. One day it was a trucker calling out to me, another day it was the city police waving to me.

I got used to male attention, and I came to like and expect it. I began to look in the mirror at myself, turn myself around and think, this is what men want. I don't know why, but this is what they want. The chicken drumsticks. But other women at college told me that they didn't like cat calls and found them to be demeaning. I began to wonder, what was wrong with me for liking them? At the same time, I used college to delve deeper into my Islam inspired, ironically, by an almost-boyfriend in high school who asked what I wore in the summer, trying to imagine me in little clothing, which ultimately led me to embrace my mother's Islam from which I had distanced myself during my high school years.

At that point, my legs became a simultaneous point of pride and shame for me.

Because maybe if I didn't wear those "tight" jeans, I wouldn't call attention to myself.

So at 21, a few days after being called "bitch" after not responding to a man's advances as I walked to class one day, I donned hijab. I looked rag-tag in the beginning because I did not have very many loose-fitting pants that I felt were appropriate. This would be the answer, I believed. This way, my thighs would no longer stop traffic.

It took me a few months to get used to having bountiful male attention to becoming invisible.



I struggled with weight during and after hijab in a way I never have. In the midst of that struggle, my thighs have taken on another identity for me--evidence of poor fitness. Sometimes I look at the shape of my lower thigh as a barometer for how much weight I have gained or loss. In medical school, I embraced the idea of "challenge pants," or pants that were too small for me now but that I would use as a weight loss incentive. Sometimes, it worked. Other times, I was a third year medical student. I still have a few pairs of those challenge pants in my closet.

Even with fluctuating weight, the lower part of my body still draws attention, usually from men I designate "street randoms." This one man proclaimed to me that my thighs were "like they made 'em in Mississippi!"

To which I laughed and though, "No, more like how they make them in West Africa." And that's where I reached my peace with my legs, years ago. I did not inherit my mother's body. I get my body from my Nigerian side of the family. My mother loved me and marveled at the transformation of my young body into a form different from that of the women in her family, the form of a Nigerian woman with long legs, thick thighs and ample behind. She would later lament the "baseball bat" legs in her family. Her instinct was for me to cover to protect myself. Though covering is certainly a tactic, self-awareness I think is another important tool of protection.

Not only self-awareness, but self-love and compassion.

This is the body of my West African ancestors that I have been blessed to inherit. These are not the legs of other women, whose thighs and calves are not that different in size. So no, my figure does not lend to the classic ballet physique. And yes, maybe I share ancestors with some of my sisters in Mississippi. But this is my body, and before it's for anyone else and more than it will ever be for anyone else, it is for me, alhamdulillah.

I don't need street randoms to validate me.

How powerful it would have been if my mother taught me to love my body, or taught me modesty in the context of self-love.

Who knows, I...probably would have been the same woman who thought her thighs looked like chicken drumsticks in skinny jeans.

...and I still kind of do.

A Career Woman

As salaam alaikum,

This past Sunday, I was busily cleaning my apartment in anticipation of meeting up with my SO after his trip to SF. My place usually lies in shambles because of the time I spend out of it either hanging out on the East Side or fulfilling my many residency responsibilities. When I planned his Sunday return to Seattle, I proposed he meet me at my place before returning to his place to attend a panel on life after residency by recent graduates with perhaps Ethiopian food thereafter. He happily agreed, even before I mentioned that my place would likely be clean when he came.

"Don't make promises you can't keep," he said flatly.

His dead-pan delivery of jokes usually takes me off guard, and I took mild offense before he told me he was just kidding. Even so, I spent much of my Sunday scrubbing and sweeping and vacuuming.

I was putting the finishing touches on my place when my phone rang. I expected it to be him, because it was almost time for us to leave to go to the recent grad panel. I looked up and it was instead one of my co-residents. I was simultaneously excited and crestfallen. One of my OB patients was due, or as wont to say, "one of my ladies" was due, so I thought it was her presenting to triage in labor. That kind of thing throws monkey wrenches into plans.

Instead, I hear that it is my patient who was supposed to be scheduled for c-section in the coming days. She was contracting painfully every 3 minutes.

I think, great, a c-section at least takes place over a finite amount of time, so I can go in and come out 1.5 hours to two hours later. I told my SO this as we adjusted our evening plans. He would go to a movie while I participated in the section.

Long story short, from anesthesia push back, to slowing contractions to a complicated section, I was not out of the hospital until 6.5 hours after that initial call. By this time, my SO drove back to his place, never having seen my sparkling clean apartment, both of us having missed the grad panel and neither of us having Ethiopian food.

In fact, I didn't eat dinner that night because I had nothing prepared and all food places that I would have bothered with were closed.

It was a gratifying section in which baby was fat and healthy and the surgeon commended me for the command I had over closing the incision. What was not gratifying was talking to my SO to find that he was upset with me after my Sunday was thwarted.

I explained to him that I probably didn't have to be there, but my co-resident sold it as if the delivery were imminent and I got there to find that it was pushed back an hour and a half, then another 2.5 hours, and so on. I couldn't easily say to my patient that I wouldn't return after I had essentially promised her in her last three visits that I would be present for the procedure and round on her in the hospital.

The next day, after I apologized again (even though it really wasn't my fault!) and my SO told me that he was going to ask me a question the next day and he wanted me to think it over. I asked him if it were an ultimatum. He told me it wasn't. I really had no idea what he was thinking, what he was really angry about, and what I had done wrong.

I knew he was going to ask it over dinner. So yesterday, after our quesadillas arrived at this Mexican restaurant near his place, he asked me, "How much of a career woman do you see yourself as? I think I know the answer, but I just want to hear it from you."

Really? That was it? All of that build for that question.

So I answered, "Well, you know, babe, I could totally see me taking some time off of my work schedule to spend time at home with children."

"I know you say that, but then things like Sunday happen."

Things like Sunday? What was special about Sunday? I've delivered nearly 30 continuity patients, some of whom have come in times that it interrupts my plans with my SO. He's understood before. Similarly, I've been called in back up at random times.

"I was fine until you said you didn't have to go in," he told me.

Ahh. And therein lies the problem. I said too much.

For him, I didn't have to go in, but I went in, anyway, prioritizing something I didn't have to do over our plans. Even though I explained to him that I didn't have to go in (I never do for continuities), but I promised this patient that I would come to her c-section when it was scheduled for a future date. I didn't have to but I felt obligated. And, more than that, I wanted to be there for a patient I had bonded with throughout her pregnancy.

"I just want to know if, after we're married, I'm eventually going to be seeing you only 1 or 2 times a week."

Really? This is what came of me scrubbing into one c-section, the exact circumstances of which I described to him? Him thinking that suddenly I'm going to become a workaholic who never comes home?

And he thinks there is some definable dichotomy between being a "career woman" and...not, whatever either of those mean.

So I told him, "First of all, babe, career woman is a really antiquated term."

"Really?"

"Yes, but I know what you mean."

So I broke it down for him.

Because, the truth of the matter is, if I could have married and started a family years ago, even as much as 10 years ago, I would have, if the opportunity came along. So it didn't. So I continued with my education. I asked him, if there were such a thing as a dichotomy between me being a working woman and being more domestic, I shouldn't have gone into medicine at all. I should have instead worked small-time or more acceptably domestic jobs until a potential husband came along. But that's not how I roll. So I continued my education and training, all the while knowing that whenever I did marry and have children, I would adapt it into whatever stage and position of life I was in.

Furthermore, I told him, it is hard to say what I will be like when I have children. Life doesn't stop because I plan to have children in the future. It is a fluid position that changes. So while right now I'd love to be involved in many of my continuity patient's deliveries, I recognize that, at some point, family time will take priority.

But that was such a hilarious question to me. If we got married tomorrow and he wanted to start a family right away, I would be game. But in the meantime, life goes on, I have a robust work life with many professional and patient-doctor relationships to maintain as well. I cannot put my life on pause for a course of life that has never been my decision alone to make. 

Body of Confessions: Long Hair

Salaam,

I'm on nights right now and I just squeezed by with only four hours of sleep. There is a mandatory diversity session at my residency tomorrow that I have to attend from 1-5pm, thus abdicating a full morning of sleep. I should have slept more, but I'm so excited that I have a little bit more time to write because I'm sleeping less.

Earlier this week, I decided to resume taking vitamins for hair and nails. I had taken these vitamins consistently for several months during medical school and saw some real results in terms of not only hair health but hair length unparalleled to my previous efforts. I stopped taking them, actually, only after I had lost some weight and the pills started making me nauseous. At that time, I also started doing some other hair care things that really improved my hair health overall, and I have seen more strength, health and growth than I have seen since I was 12 years old. I have had some breakage at my crown, though, so I decided it would be a good time to bring hair vitamins back into the mix.

Hair vitamins also have B complex, which is helpful for me for stress. When I started taking B complex in medical school (before I started hair vitamins), my mood improved tremendously in just a couple of weeks of resuming the vitamins.

Anyway, on the eve of taking the hair vitamins, I decided to also straighten my hair to trim my ends. I sometimes trim my ends with my hair straight so I can retain some type of straight shape, and other times when it's kinky by just clipping the ends of twists in my hair. I wanted to straighten it just to get a sense of its straight length.

After straightening my hair, I saw that my hair is actually longer than it has been probably since 2006 or so. It made me realize that I was not able to retain any length in my hair during medical school, probably mainly secondary to vitamin deficiency and stress. It's still odd to look at myself with my hair straight, not only because my hair lives in a puff atop my head for most of the year (which is actually conducive to breakage at my oft-neglected crown), but the last time my hair was straightened, it wasn't this long.

Because duh, hair grows.

And while I reveled in my new hair health, a baseline that so many take for granted, when I slept the next morning (since I'm on nights, I sleep during the day), I had a dream that I had straightened my hair and I was surprised to find that my hair was significantly longer--12 inches longer. And I reveled in having long hair just to awake and remember that though my hair is longer than it has been in a while, it is not that long.

And then I became instantly disappointed in myself.

Long hair, don't care? I feel like that is not a reality for many, if not most, black women. More like, long hair, absolutely do care.

I have lived a life that I tried to be as little about my hair as possible, in some parts of my life more than others (namely, the years where I wore khimar). After having a mother who fussed over how my hair basically dissolved away after chemical treatment, I did not to have any part of continuing that tradition, so I went natural. I stopped letting chemicals seep into my scalp every 6 weeks in favor of my natural texture, the touted "new growth" that for several years had been the nemesis to my attempts at bone-straight hair. I went natural, and all of the straight hair fell out. That was in 2003.

Years later, when the likes of Curly Nikki and Naptural85 and all of these other naturalistas came out, I had already arrived at a hair regimen of my own that mirrored popular natural hair care culture. Braiding my hair and then undoing it to have a longer puff was stretching, that thing I did to get spiraly hair was called flat twists, among other things.

I have worn my natural hair when it is only a few inches long and have struggled with it, sometimes inadvertently destroying my hair. I have not been about length, I have been about health in my daily hair care practices. The fact that I wear my hair in a puff most of the time is a testament to my favoring low-maintenance hair styles for my life as a busy resident.

But regardless of how I feel during the day and how much I am an advocate for love your body, including your hair, as it is, I have persistently had these dreams as an adult. As a child, I have not, only as an adult have I had these dreams where I wake up and my hair is significantly longer than it actually is in real life.

And I guess that's just it. At a subconscious level, I want to have much longer hair, hair that I can straighten and let blow in the wind, hair that I can let shrink and shake about my head and still have some length to it. It usually happens after I do my hair in a way I find particularly cute--invariably, I'll have a dream where it's even longer, and even cuter.

I think the fact of the matter is, subconsciously, so much of my idea of femininity is connected to long hair, and not just longer than men's hair, but long hair at base. And I've never had the length of hair that is in most cultures considered unquestionably female. And while the styles of my hair are generally more female, I have to count on the contours of my body and the way I dress to express more of my femininity, especially in those days I'm in a rush and can only do a puff.

And I wish it weren't like that. I wish I didn't have that subconscious desire to have longer hair, but it is there. It sometimes haunts me in my sleep after a day that I feel like was otherwise content. I know it's not about anyone else--it's about me. Because in the dream, each time, I'm waking up in the morning, preparing for my day, and looking in the mirror in surprise. No one else compliments me, no one else becomes attracted to me, no one else cares. It's just me in front of the mirror, marveling at my own self.

I'm usually thinner in these dreams, too, but I'll save that one for later.

The Ideal

Salaam,

The other day, I was sitting with my SO and we were reflecting on our relationship (1.5 years now), and I can't remember how it came up, but I think I mentioned that I'd grown since the time I'd known him, and that I'm still growing, and I realize the things that I used to want in a relationship I don't actually want and things that I didn't think I wanted I really appreciate having.

He asked me who my ideal SO would be.

And I couldn't answer him. I know he's conscious of the differences in our spirituality and probably wonders if one day I'll wake up and decide I'd rather be with a more-practicing man and leave him on his way, especially when I get to talking about religion (even if I'm bemoaning certain elements). I feel like the answer I gave him would have only upset him.

Because, really, I've never thought long enough to formulate an ideal. My ideal man was always someone who would fit well with me. Someone who would make sense in my life, my practice, with my belief, and that was it. It takes actually being in a relationship to realize how selfish that view is and realize that it's never that simple with another, complex, whole human being at your side that you're relating to.

And just because I've waited and was prayerful and feel like I'm a really good person, doesn't mean I'm going to be the perfect SO. In fact, I spent so many years by myself, I still find myself being self-centered and forcing myself to put myself aside for a little bit to really hear my SO's point of view, his hangups, his problems.

Not that I'm usually a selfish person. Of course I know how to be a good friend and I do this for friends all the time. It's just...I guess I always imagined a relationship while being alone and relatively self-sufficient, so spending time with someone in the flesh who is filling that role after imagining it alone for a while makes it hard to get outside of myself and those imaginings and relate to the person on the other side of the dream.

So I feel like whatever I imagined as the ideal man or the ideal relationship before was fairly one-sided, as if there were a human man out there whose sole purpose in life was to be my eventual husband or something. And of course I never expected someone to be like that, but when one creates an imaginary man in their brains, he doesn't tend to have aspirations unique to your own.

What would be a better soul mate then one who also believed in care for the underserved, here and abroad? Maybe...

The fact is, the possible "ideal" combinations with me as a person are endless, but they are, regardless, combinations that I do not find often in nature. And implicit in my SO's question is his wondering if I'm settling or not, if I can do better or not.

And I guess I could imagine a lot of different types of men. Of late, I think it would be cool to travel to Brazil, specifically to Salvador, and meet some guy at the faculdade who was really into Nigeria, specifically Igbo culture, and therefore be fascinated with me, my family's history, my religion, and things go from there...

But I don't think about those things anymore. I don't construct ideals anymore because I have something real that is good, that works, that is better than I could have imagined in the package that it came in. I have before me a real man who has lived 6 years before me, has lived 33 years independent of me, has dreams and goals that do not involve me, and yet is now intimately interwoven in my life and it just seems silly to prefer to be with an imaginary man of my own making.

Whether or not I could "do better" is I guess up for debate, but I don't think I can fabricate an ideal. Not right now, not while things are so real.

The Business of Being Born

Salaam,

I'm following along with my cousin's induction at a distance. She was excited to go into the hospital yesterday, but I knew all too well what a nightmare inductions from 0 dilation can be. I've been following along, step by step, and now, more than 24 hours into her induction, she is finally getting into a more active labor pattern (wouldn't call her being in active labor yet!).

When she and her mother began to get discouraged when she was 1cm after 12 hours of misoprostol, I assured her that I had managed some women who were inducing over the course of 4 days (I didn't include that some of these women were so tired by the end that they opted for c-section).

To which her mother, my cousin, said, "They were in labor for 4 days?"

To which I answered, "Yes and no." Putting misoprostol in the cervix is not the start of labor. The start of labor is regular, painful contractions and cervical change. So some of those women were not even in latent labor for more than 24 hours after the first cervical maturing agents were given.

My poor cousin, who did a lot of talk on Facebook and elsewhere about her moment, how no one was going to ruin it or force her to take medications...asked for an epidural after the first hour of contractions at 2cm dilated.

Can't say I didn't see that coming...but anyway.

When my time comes in the next 5 years insha'Allah, I will not turn my nose up at an epidural, I'll say that right now! It'll be nice to try natural, but I'm for safe delivery of babies first, and I'm not sure I'd tolerate a foley balloon, either.

Anyway, all of this bustle around the third great-great-grandbaby of my grandparents (my cousin's first granddaughter, my newest first cousin twice removed, hehe) has gotten me excited about my own childbearing prospects.

So I'm just going to say it, categorically, once and for all.

I love babies. I love babies, always have, always have wanted more than I'll perhaps be able to handle, and always looked forward to the day of being a mommy. And ever since the first time that I witnessed childbirth, I've wanted to experience that as well. Yes, the moment that make most women cringe as they watch the head pop out of the introitus, sometimes destroying the perineum in its wake and gushing forth with blood and poop made me say...I want to do that!

I'm continuously bitten by the bug of seeing women around me pregnant and birthing babies. From one of my attendings, one of the former residents of my program, who had glamor shots after she had a successful vaginal delivery of her 6 pound beauty, to my co-resident who recently went to c-section to deliver her surprisingly plump 12-pounder. From the plans of one of my attendings to conceive in the next year to the current 21 week pregnancy of one of my classmate's wives. Not to mention the oodles and oodles of babies my med school classmates have been having.

I can wait my turn!

That is not a typo, haha. I certainly can wait my turn, but it doesn't make me any less excited! I don't feel any less privileged to take part in the birthing process for all of the families that I've delivered, even as that number builds up. Every time I get to deliver a baby is still exciting, though in different ways than it was initially as I build up experience. But I've seen enough people on the other side of things to know that starting a family is no joke in a way I cannot appreciate until I'm there.

So I'll just keep training for now, work on getting married first, and then will make an actual five-year plan...

In the meantime, my cousin just dilated to 5. I have to go to work in an hour in which I will be managing our maternal child service in the afternoon. So I'll be surrounded by all things baby soon enough. For now, this morning, I have to focus on my medicine patients.

But, rest assured, I've been excited about having my own children for years now. I think about having my own children seriously every day, from what they'll look like (with my current SO as the combination) to what I'll name...the girls. Boys names are tough for me.

And having experienced, through friends and patients, the joys and traumas of the conception process, from miscarriages in the second trimester, fetal demises in the third trimester, preterm deliveries, complications, and infertility...I'm ready for parenthood in any form, whether they are my own children or whether I am adopting. Insha'Allah, I'm ready...

...to wait!

My Aged Uterus

Salaam,

In January 1996, 17 years and 11 months ago, I was living with my grandparents for the second time in 6 months. My mother had a hysterectomy earlier that year because of pretty serious cramping and bleeding she had with endometriosis and large uterine fibroids.

When my mother told me, I was saddened by the finality of never having that little sister I wanted. Because my father continued working five days a week, my 8-year-old brother and I lived with my grandparents for the summer. It would be the last summer that my grandparents did not have air conditioning. It was installed in the days before we returned home. It was also the summer of the OJ Simpson trial, and we spent many of those sweaty Midwestern summer days lying on the floor in front of the television, low enough so our grandparents could see the trial. It was also the summer we introduced our grandparents to Rugrats.

I returned to the fifth grade just to end up going back to Flint that winter of 1994-95. They took her uterus and cervix but not her ovaries, and one of them had enlarged, concerning for cancer. When my mother told me, I was devastated, crying with the fear of losing her. My father continued working, so back to our grandparents it was. I completed weekly assignments from my public school down in Ypsilanti at my aunt's Islamic School in Flint. I wouldn't have to repeat the fifth grade for my missed days, my mother assured me.

I remember that winter. I called it the tundra winter because it was cold and barely snowed. Temperatures did not venture above 20 Fahrenheit for most of the summer. I remember the cold between my grandparents' house and Grandfather's conversion van, from the van to the school, from the school to the van, and back again. The pathology came back on my mother's ovary and it wasn't cancer. It was a chocolate cyst, a large focus of endometriosis that grew and caused her ovary to torse. My mother, who had opted to keep her ovaries in order to maintain her normal hormones, went into surgical menopause at the age of 41.

A week or so later, I was playing in the TV room of my grandparents' house when I felt a sudden trickle. I went to the bathroom and pulled down my panties to see little spots of brown in the bottom. I knew what a period was. My mother taught me about it when she pulled me out of maturation class in the fourth grade, wanting to present me sex "in the context of God" but still being too afraid to talk about intercourse with me. I knew what a period was because that's what happened to Mommy sometimes on family trips when she'd have to sit on a towel in the car and when she was writhing in pain and vomiting. It was the pads in the bathroom and the smell. This was a little bit of brown. I was confused.

I called Grandmother and asked her what it was. I can't remember her words, but she confirmed my suspicions with a groan, turning her eyes towards the ceiling with a look of "Lord help us, another one fertile!" It was my period!

She gave me a pad and clean panties, and I scurried off to play, excited that I was, like Clair Huxtable told Rudy, "a woman now."

...and then, the next day, I got my first cramps, and it was no longer fun.

My mother lost her ability to ovulate, and I gained mine. My mother lost her ability to bear children as I began my journey to be able to bear my own. I was 10 years old.




Now, 17 years and 11 months later, I am 28 years old. My ovaries have ovulated and my uterus has shed for over 200 cycles. It's coming up on 18 years of menstruation and I'm over halfway done with my reproductive years and the best ones have already passed me by. And I wonder...what was the use of starting to menstruate when I was 10 years old?



I thought about this after reflecting on the teenage girls whose babies I've delivered over times. These girls usually have short labors, breathing well through their contractions and tolerating them without epidurals and then proceed to push their babies out in less than an hour of pushing. And these are first babies, the babies it can take up to two hours to push out. I once had a patient come in at five centimeter dilated, get pushed back to labor and delivery, progress 10 minutes after my exam to complete, and pushed the baby out in one contraction, three pushes.

Sitting next to one of our interns, we reflected on this. "I hate to admit it, but there's something about the teenage body that is made for having babies. It's like, they're not mentally or emotionally ready, but their bodies are ready."

I said, "Maybe that's why we developed patriarchal societies. Because we best reproduce when we are teenage women and therefore need the extra support and protection from men."

She nodded. "You're probably right." After some thought, she said, "You know, I don't know why we haven't yet evolved so that our optimum reproductive years are after we, you know, get ourselves settled, get an education, figure out what we want in life..."

The fact of the matter remains that I am a female physician who completed medical and graduate school at 27, only now have begun to have reasonable marriage prospects, and I have had the ability to bear children for the last 18 years. My reproductive system is old and unused. It will not be as easy for me to get pregnant as it may have been for me 8-10 years ago, when I was in my reproductive prime. The tissue of my cervix is not as pliable and may not dilate as efficiently. My body has been so used to being in the non-pregnant conformation for so long, its no telling if my hips will open wide enough for a large baby head.

My mother had me at 30. My head was too big for her pelvis and she could not push me out. She went to c-section for cephalopelvic disproportion. My head was so big, the pediatrician had to measure it twice. I am going to have a large-headed baby, hehe.



When I was 13 years old, three years into menstruation and already in love with an age-mate of mine, I imagined us getting married. We would get married and have our first baby when I was 20. That baby would be a boy and he would be a junior. We were going to live in Detroit in a brick, one-story house. I was going to call 9-11 and deliver at home and he was going to be my miracle baby, just like this 13-year-old boy was a miracle in my life.

At the same time, I scoffed at the girls in my class who wanted to be teenage mothers, like their moms. At least my aspirations weren't so ridiculous.

I would move away from that boy, never letting him know how I felt, and I would not be having a child at 20. Or 25. And maybe not at 30.



In the end, I don't mourn my lost reproductive time. Instead, I celebrate my privilege, my ability to choose my partner, my ability to attain my education and ability to wait for a time of more security for whoever my baby beans will be. And although at times I feel like that business is atrophying...insha'Allah, it keeps working into your 40s, less efficiently, sometimes making mistakes, but it keeps working. Insha'Allah, I'll have time.

...but 18 years of being able to reproduce is a long time and makes me feel old. Makes my uterus and ovaries feel old. That's 18 years of nausea and vomit inducing cramps. That's 18 years of overdosing on ibuprofen to try not to stay in bed all day in fetal position. That's 18 years of trying not to ruin clothes.

Oh my aged uterus, why do you torment me so?

[uncensored]: Part of That World

Salaam,

I've been following along with the recent posts at loveinshallah.com in response to the controversial contribution, "How I Met My Son's Mother." First of all, big ups to this guy who was so courageous to write a piece on this website and be subject to such scrutiny. There's not much left to say that hasn't already been said in several response posts on that website and the 140 and counting comments.

Reading all of these posts about the ideals of Muslim marriage and how we fall so far from that ideal did get me feeling, to use a phrase that I actively despise, "some kinda way..."

I'm probably just ovulating or something and my hormones have come out of a year and a half long hiding, because I almost started crying at a beautiful moment between a tiny newborn and her teenage mother when I was doing baby's exam yesterday. But reading these blogs about people seeking out marriage in the halal way reminded me of what I once wanted for myself, and frankly, what I gave up on a long time ago.

It all unraveled years ago when I was on an online site and this brother from Florida was serious about setting up communication. This was not the first one and nor was he the last. He was also not the first more than 1000 miles away who wanted to skype. In these settings, I usually gave an email that I used to forward my old University of Michigan mail that I used for the purpose of signing up for internet things that I didn't want to spam me...and for online dating. No phone numbers, no skype dates. Anyone who wanted to skype with me immediately I figured were too into my looks, anyway.

So brother from Florida was earnest. He was not at all my time and had a career trajectory that was not appetizing (the lyric comes to mind, "I'm a hustler, baby, I just want you to know..."). But otherwise, he was just fine on initial contacts from an Islamic standpoint. And for him, I was just fine...pre-med (at that time), with a promising career, "just throw a hijab on [me] and [I'd] be perfect."

I didn't take offense to this because I never said never again to hijab, and at this point in the game, approaching 25, I didn't know if I should be so picky as to not want to be with a man who felt hijab was fard.

Then he asked me if I had a wali. Ooohh...

"Because, you know, I talk to sisters on here and they act like they're serious, but then I find out they don't have a wali, which is absolutely required."

This was either about to be my perfect out for the Florida Hustler or it was going to be yet another cop-out for a brother who may have had promise.

I didn't have a wali. I hadn't sought a wali and at that point was unsure if I wanted to, even though I know that it would be required if I chose to go about marriage at this way. What was I thinking? I know exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking that I had to finesse this Muslim marriage thing. I have a Christian father who gets nervous anyone has a Muslim name or comes from a majority-Muslim country for "extremist ties," in spite of being married to a Muslim woman who practices five pillars. My "coming out" as Muslim in my early 20s imposed a deep rift in my family that my adult brother with autism cannot afford, nor can my parents' otherwise loving and functional relationship afford. It's a sucky place to be in as a daughter of an interfaith couple, but so it is. My parents, for this reason, were not fit to guide me through the marriage process.

Of course, my father would love to arrange my marriage with a man that he trusts. That man would be a Christian man. I bet he still would love to, but that's another story.

So, if I wanted to go forward with legit Muslim marriage, by the books, I probably would need a wali. But where would I find one? One of my formerly atheist now Muslim convert friends from medical school who converted to Islam prior to marrying her husband easily told me that I should talk to an imam, that he would help me.

Yes, thank you so much. Because it was so hard for you, dating your Muslim husband the regular way.

I hope this friend is okay. She had no wali and shut herself out from her friends in the time leading up to her marriage. I didn't even get to do my "there is no compulsion in religion" talk with her before she apparently converted and struggled through salat with Arabic words she didn't understand.

So here I was, trying to be more honest, on skype (still wasn't comfortable with it) with Florida Hustler Brother who was right. If I wanted to do this right, I needed a wali. But doing things right would mean ultimately alienating my father from this process, and maybe alienating him from my life as well. I realized that getting a wali was just a red herring. The process of attempting to get "Muslim married" by getting to know a man outside of the dating paradigm and essentially arranging my marriage was incompatible with maintaining a relationship with my father and having my parents at all involved in my decision to marry.

Because my mother is a wife that defers to her husband. My mother is also a woman who did not have patience for her pool of Muslim suitors, which for her as a black Muslim woman in the late 70s were black Muslim men, the new Muslim crew following WD Muhammad or at that point, stragglers from the Nation, who she had seen preferentially select "lost found girls" because "they put out." She is also a woman who does salat in English and does not shudder when people tell her that her prayers will therefore not be recognized. She slides easily from reading the Qur'an daily to living her Islam in the way she sees fit, and in that mode of Islam, she sees no conflict in having married my Christian father, whose morality is more excellent than any other Muslim man she's known, including her own father.

Therefore, she would not be my ally in seeking to get Muslim married at the expense of my relationship with my father.

There's always the slim possibility that I would go about this process, not alienate my father, he meets my suitor and sees past the religious difference to see that he was a genuinely God-fearing man who had the best intentions for his daughter. My mother would also be pleased with such a suitor.

But in order to get there, I would have to begin a serious search, and in order for it to be safe for me as a single woman searching without the aid of family or other elders of a spouse, I would need a wali, a legit one, a trusted guardian who really had my best interests at heart.

And I'd either have to keep it from my father or endure months of disapproval from him until the process yielded success, and the impact that would have on my mother and brother as my father took out his frustration on my mother, as he did when I first told him that I would "never be Christian."

I'm not being melodramatic. My father still tries at intervals to get me to realize my salvation through Jesus Christ and convert.

Some would argue that the decision should be easy, that I should aim to please God more than my parents. And what more example do I need than the father of both my and my father's religion, Abraham, and blah blah blah.

I mean, it is a valid argument. I should want to please God over everything else. But people who make these arguments typically were never in the position I was in. Without my parents, I have no one in this world. And at the very least, as a single woman, that is not safe.



So I closed the Skype conversation with Florida Brother and never spoke to him again. I would not be getting a wali. And from that point onward, it slowly degenerated to, "I will not be getting Muslim married."

To which I occasionally wonder, what will become of me? Marriage being half of my religion, I either will not get married at all or, if I marry, I will be less of a Muslim because of it. The ramifications are clear. I will become like my mother, who has not prayed with anyone else besides me, occasionally, when prayers are silent because I do salat in Arabic and she does salat in English. She fasts in isolation, she practices in isolation. She hasn't been in a mosque since before I was born. She's able to exist as a Muslim woman married to this Christian man praying in English because of her isolation. This was not what I wanted for myself.

It's not true that marrying a non-Muslim man means that you're children will be raised non-Muslim. I've seen more Muslim men married to non-Muslim women raise non-Muslim children than the other way around. Cultures are different, and in ours, often, the mother's faith rules. But it is true that a strong, believing father of another faith will continue to have an influence and somewhat control over especially his daughter's potential spouses, especially if that daughter loves and respects him.

I wore hijab for two years, successfully finding ways to hide it from my father until I couldn't anymore and for multiple other reasons, stopped. The same way goes my plans for marriage.

And I've come out the other side a shadow of the Muslimah that I initially sought to become. I strove to become part of a world that I could not have become a part of without disowning myself from my father and potentially permanently destroying our relationship. But my father is a good Christian man who believes in God with all of his heart who raised me to the best of his ability and wants the best for me and he does not deserve such cruelty.

My mother, a few years ago in my angst about my situation, apologized to me as I spelled this out for her. She should not have placed me in such a precarious position. What a thing to apologize for, to have married a solid husband, a great father and provider.



In the end, I have made a choice about how I will seek my partner. It is one that both of my parents approve of and because of that, feels a lot safer, although in reality, I realize that there is no safe way to do such a thing. Not only in terms of safety of emotions, but in terms of safety of person. I go forward prayerfully as with everything I do.

"She said yes!" Really?

Salaam,

Wow, a lot of my friends have gotten engaged this weekend. Not even Michigan people with that absurd Sweetest Day. Maybe it was the nip in the air, pumpkin spice lattes and the crunch of dry leaves that gets people sentimental, thinking about spending the rest of their holidays with that one person. I don't know.

One of my friends, whose entire beginning of courtship I witnessed in medical school, proposed to his girlfriend of 4-5 years. Thank you, Facebook, for letting me know. He had a later post in which he said excitedly, "She said yes!" And thus my knee jerk response, "O RLY?"


You act like you're surprised. Or maybe that statement, like much of the engagement-marriage institutional tradition in the US, is just a matter of tradition with empty meaning. Because, seriously dude, you could have asked her to marry you 3-4 years ago and she would have said yes.

Hell, you could have asked her to marry you when she kept squeezing her petite body between us in the dance floor when I first realized she was interested in you, and she probably would have said yes.

Do I sound bitter? Hah! Let me explain.

I'm very happy for my friends. I was friends with the guy first. He was one of my guy friends who loved the ladies and dated around and "had fun" as much as he could before he settled down. He was one of my guy friends who had ridiculous notions about relationships and women, even after he was in a relationship. I think he was vociferous about these ideas to counteract the very obvious different persona he had with his girlfriend.

And I was very happy for them because I felt like he would be one of these guys content with a perpetual relationship with marriage not in sight. But really, she said yes? Hackneyed, unnecessary, and a no duh situation.

Now, there are, for sure, women who have said no, women who have hesitated, women who have said yes and get cold feet once wedding day comes, yes. That happens. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about men and women in relationships that I've accompanied for either part time where I feel like the guy needs to shit or get off the pot.

Seriously!

I'm tired of the standard male discourse, oh, marriage is just about a piece of paper, oh, the ball and chain, or as one guy told me, being "locked up in holy matrimony." Them's fightin' words! There's already enough gender struggle without the notion that one, marriage is something that only women want and two, men are just besides themselves in suffering once they are forced to marry. As the two genders who we're supposed to believe are here to be a comfort to one another, we have spent much of our history being the opposite, and really, that cycle needs to end.



But maybe, just maybe, my friend is surprised. Maybe he's recognized all the times when his actions weren't worthy of her devotion, the times they've been distant, the times he felt that she could do better, maybe still believes that she could do better, and she said yes anyway. I can't know. All I know is, he surmounted those ideas that he previously held, about relationships, about marriage, about women, to make permanent the life that he'd made with this woman in a way that is meaningful to both of them. And what's not to celebrate about that?

Can I Choose You?

Salaam,

I posted this back June 27, 2012, and removed it for various reasons. I decided to repost it because here, a year and change later, having worked with G for several rotations, the while forming a relationship with someone else...I still feel this way when I'm around him.

I think it's just that he has a beautiful spirit...

Can I Choose You? (Repost)

As salaam alaikum,

This stage of my life is amazing and I don't have all of the words to describe it. There are so many things happening, and I'm learning so many things about myself. At the same time, I'm on the cusp of another challenging phase of my life, of many more challenging and rewarding phases to come. I'm drastically changing philosophies that I've held at one time in favor of more organic, realistic and practical ways of living my life, love and faith.

And man, it's not easy.

But in the midst of all of this, I want to say I've fallen in love. I actually haven't. I just have a crush. One like I've never had before, one that was immediate, some enchanted evening, love at first sight, across a crowded room type deals.

We'll call him G.

It's time for me to get ready for work so I don't have a ton to say, except...there's something different about this one, and I can't tell if it's destiny or desire to make it destiny, strong enough, that uncontrollable thing that people always talk about, you can't help who you like.

Because you want to make strong feelings destiny.

You want to believe that there is an eternal meaning for your emotions, that it's part of God's plan, that the strong pull you're feeling towards another human being is God guiding you down the straight path, the path He intends for you. Like, snap out of it, girl, this is it. This is the it you've always wanted.

And the first time I looked into G's eyes, that's what I felt. And I've never felt that way about any living human being before. It wasn't just the striking pale green of his eyes offset by the olive of his skin and his dark brown hair. Because I've seen attractive men before but never been so drawn before...

So, as I prepare for work for the day and other things, I'm deciding what I'm going to do with this. And praying on it, because really, what I want is him. It sounds silly and crazy for someone who lived through an MTQ, but I feel like we're meant to be, and yeah. I want to lock that, secure that in any way I can.

Is it okay if I choose you, G?

I Will Not be a Good Wife

Salaam,

I will not be a good wife.

This is an admission that would have brought me to tears little over a year ago. It would be shame-invoking and I'd try to counter it with all sorts of penance, most likely starting during Ramadan. All sorts of things.

Except, this is not a hopeless, depressive declaration. More like a declaration of independence. More like an emancipation. More imperative, decisicive.

I will not be a good wife because I don't want to be.

Rather, I will not be a "good wife." I will not be this invisible apparition that I struggled to understand in my adolescence and aspired to emulate earlier in my young adulthood. I wasn't sure all that it entailed, but I picked up clues from my surroundings, primarily from my mother's example and from mainstream Muslim teachings. I had a pretty good idea of what it meant to be a good wife and I was eager to be it.

And graciously, I was not married during this time.

I was eternally frustrated because more and more of the men my age seemed to reject the idea of settling down with a good girl who would become a good wife. They wanted to play the field as long as they could. I mean, that was the biggest part of it, along with fear of commitment. Marriage was not a sex-positive institution for these men, by far. If I had a dime for every time I heard men recite comedy skits about what it's like to be with one woman for the rest of their life, specifically, to have access to only one vagina for the rest of their lives...

...well, I'd have a few dollars, anyway.

Meanwhile, I was relegated to "you'll make a good wife" status. Which would be a complement, if these men respected the institution of marriage. A wife was a potentially sexually docile woman, a fact that secured her fidelity to her husband, who was nonthreatening, dutiful, provider of children once a man is ready to settle down and lose part of himself to the old ball and chain.

That was presumptuous as well as an insult.

I was hurt for a while that men did not realize the value of a good wife. That's what I wanted to be, a real good wife. One who dedicated herself to her husband's sexual satisfaction, cared fiercely for her family, supported her husband in his endeavors, made his home.

And then I continued to grow and I was no longer hurt. I had nothing to prove. And I wasn't going to be a good wife anymore.

Not that good wife, anyway.

Maybe relating to an actual man who cared for me helped me to sort things out, move away from apparitions and be real with myself. I'm no longer aiming to be a generic wife that I think every man should want if he knew what was good for him. I will be the wife that makes sense for my relationship, for the man I'm with.

I will exchange dutifulness with loving spontaneity. I will exchange deference for only what is deserved respect. I will exchange self-sacrifice with shared compromise. I will exchange selflessness with shared self-reflection in those times when we feel that we are losing ourselves. I am lucky to be with a man who ultimately does not want me to be a good wife. He wants me to love him.

He also wants me to take care of my emotional and physical health. He wants me to be not as messy. He wants me to be myself.

And really, as much as I've been down on men in the past and the fear of commitment, I must recognize that beneath this is that basic desire to be loved and fear that the women in their lives, for one reason or another, will not. From the fear of the gold digger out for money and status, the lover out for body more than soul, and the good wife who gives more out of duty than love.

So I will love him in each moment more than I will be concerned with being a good wife.

My Reaction to "Is Marriage for White People?"

Salaam,

I'm super late, I know, but I finally picked up a (Kindle) copy of Is Marriage for White People? by Ralph Richard Banks and read essentially over a couple of OB shifts on my latest rotation. It was an enthralling read that enraged me at once and consoled me in other moments. I felt vulnerable as every single insecurity I've had about having a European SO came to the forefront in other women's narratives. For all of the scholarly research that went into the making of the book, I felt that the solution (wish it had been plural) proposed by Banks were incomplete, but I appreciated someone actually spending time with black women and telling the very unique stories of our struggles finding a mate.

I could talk on and on about the things that made me angry. I think the thing that made me angriest is that essentially the high rates of STIs and HIV among black women more than any other group in the US is secondary to something Banks calls "man sharing," which to me sounded like man whoredom. Essentially, black men are more likely than any other race of men to engage in "long-term concurrent relationships." Infidelity is the term I'm comfortable with, but I understand the diplomacy of vocabulary of a liberal discourse. Black women do not have more sexual partners than the general population, but black men, the men they almost exclusively relate to, do.

Also, the fact that abortion rates are highest amongst black women not because they have higher rates of unplanned pregnancies when they are single, it's just that that many black women in a population are single...was also telling.

I could also talk about what was consoling. That those various Okcupid and other online dating site studies that show that black women are the least sought after of any race or gender, even amongst black men, are not the whole story, was consoling. I don't have to be considered among the most beautiful group of women in the world...but it does do something to your spirit when you have studies showing you are the least desired.

What I felt was incomplete about Banks' book is that his solution to the critical shortage of marriageable men for black women was for more black women to "marry out." I don't actually take issue to that and I feel like if everyone were more comfortable marrying outside of the bounds of race, we would be a happier people. But it's not that easy. In fact, it's hard as hell.

And Banks does acknowledge this by doing lip service to the years of trauma of slavery and the sometimes comparable institutionalized racism that infected our country thereafter and what impact that had on black women and the implications of dating and marrying, specifically, white men, and not ending up with black men. Lip service because someone could write their doctoral thesis on black women and the way we relate to men based on slavery and institutionalized racism, not just a few paragraphs. And I don't really take issue to that, either. He acknowledges it while illustrating with a few vignettes happy interracial couples that are happy not because they don't struggle sometimes with issues of race, but happy because they've found a way to relate to each other in spite of it.

My problem, then, and what I find incomplete is that he says that in order to strengthen black relationships and bring black marriage back, some black women are just going to have to "marry out" so the rest can pursue their passion for black men.

And then the book ended, and I was left like, what?

Really, Richard Banks, really?

I mean, I appreciated the pages and pages of data, the relation of all of these vignettes of real women and their experience as black women in the dating and marriage market. The fact that so much resonated with me rang true. I guess that in the book was really more a gathering of data than a proposition of multiple solutions.

His thought was...the more (specifically middle class) black women open themselves up to non-black men and pursue these relationships, the less black women there will be in the pool for (middle-class, high achieving) black men to mess over (essentially). Reducing the pool of black women for these men to choose from would mean that there would be more competition for the black women left in the pool that did not seek interracial relationships, and then black men would treat the women better in this relationships because they were competing more for their affections. More black women seeking interracial relationships would therefore even the marriage gap in the middle-class, meaning more middle-class, high achieving black men would seek to marry comparable black women, less of these women would "marry down" and less would seek working-class black men as they are now (in statistically unsuccessful marriages and relationships), and more of those men would be available for their lower class black women, and...

I'm not sure how this is really benefiting lower class black women. Most of his focus and all of his interviews are focused on middle class black women, and lower class black women are left to victim status. I feel like he represents them as past the point of rescue, showing statistically that marriage has ceased to exist for poor blacks.

His treatment of this lower class is at times other in a way that his defense sometimes feels patronizing. In this narrative, I feel like they are, again, the invisible victims that the likes of Bill Cosby, a now disconnected, old-school middle class black, and Barack Obama (where do you begin?) cannot understand when they call on black fathers to take more responsibility for the children they begot.

Even though he expresses shock that black women bear so much of the burden internally on trying to keep the race together, essentially--they are concerned with preserving blackness in their children, both culturally and phenotypically (a thought process I can identify with), preserving the community by supporting "our" men, all sentiments that are not shared so readily by our male counterparts--the best solution he has after all that data, so it seems, is that some black women take it for the team and marry out.

I say this all the while being the type of black woman that, in spite of feeling a strong sense of duty towards the black community, has never limited herself conceptually to black men. The first man I ever loved, the man I loved the hardest, was South Asian. Nor have I completely tuned out black men. I am not only attracted to black men. But there are ways in which it is easier and more automatic for me to be attracted to people of color, I must admit.

So I can understand how a black woman would be uniquely attracted to black men, as many of the women in the book expressed.

In the face of how many black women prefer black men, suggesting (middle class) black women to marry out does feel like taking one for the team.

It's all back in the hands of black women. Black men, with their propensity for "man sharing" and all other foolishness, their lack of sense of duty of racial preservation (not all, but enough that the surplus of interracial relationships with black men ending up with non-black women contributes to the partner shortage for black women), are no active player in the solution at all. They are just passive actors, persuaded to actually commit to intelligent, accomplished black women only after they see that non-black men are sweeping them up and there's less of them to come by.

I certainly thing that more people should consider interracial relationships. That will help break down barriers and gradually make it easier, as it already is easier for those of us than it was just decades ago. But placing the fate of relationships and marriage in women's hands is irresponsible. There are certainly other solutions that involve men being better people.

The name of the book, in fact, comes from a group of young black boys asking how to be better fathers, and presented with the idea of meeting with married couples to explore that. The boy who asked the question said he wasn't interested in hearing about marriage, and his friend said, "Marriage is for white people." Telling, that this is the origin of the book, young black boys not feeling a connection to marriage, and yet, the solution lies in mature black women.

How about addressing those concerns of those young black boys, getting to the bottom of why they think marriage is for white people, and helping them to find a paradigm where marriage, or if not marriage, long-term committed relationships, could be for them, too? Little black boys, some of them who will grow up to be working class, some middle class, who will inherit attitudes about women and relationships from the very men who are leaving so many black women single.

I don't think it lies only in the boys, but I think we need to pay more attention to our boys. That's where my focus lies. I don't see our men as past the point of rescue but, for my own mental health, I don't see myself as the one who will be doing the rescuing. I see for myself, now more than ever, the greatest likelihood of happiness in a long-term relationship with a non-black man. I don't exclude the possibility of such a relationship with a black man, but it has not been my experience that black men are interested in that kind of relationship with me.

On the eve of possibly ending up with a white man at that, I have not given up on the cause. I still feel duty to my community. I am the only black physician in a clinic that serves a large black population. My patients remind me of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. They remind me of the girls and boys I went to school with who are now men and women. These are my people, regardless of who I marry, if God so wills that I marry. My focus is on the children, making sure they have the tools to be, if they so choose, responsible and loving adults.

And I believe that is the more apt solution to bolstering the black community and preventing our ruin. I'm not concerned about the phenotype of my potential children or how much they'll identify as black, per se, as I am the plight of the black children that exist now and will continue to exist in a world where they are marginalized.

I wish, for all of those statistics and his mention of his own sons, that Banks had thought more about mentorship.

Because what if those little black boys that thought that marriage was for white people and their cohort resoundingly grow up to graduate high school and not enter prison, unlike the current fate of so many of our boys?

Even after this very specific, pointed criticism, I must say that I overall appreciated the experience of reading this book. While I am critical of the only proposed solution to the very complicated issue of the black marriage decline (and the marriage decline in general), I would not go as far as this Jezebel blogger who does not appear to be black who defends black women's right to love whoever they want in an incomplete assessment of Bank's argument.

I knew I wouldn't like the article from the picture. The woman in the picture harkens back to the time that the black women represented in media were all fair and mixed-looking. And the picture looks like that of a woman who regrets having fallen into the hands of leering generic white man.

Then the article simplifies the argument in implying that Banks is saying white men will be black women's savior.

Umm...yes, only if white men are the only non-black men that black women could marry.

And when we are talking about heterosexual women who desire marriage and children, yes, actually, a man is necessarily part of the solution.

In the end, I can relate to what many of the women said. When I imagined myself marrying and starting a family, I imagined myself doing it younger. I imagined it being with someone my parents approved of and who fit into my extended family easily, like many of my cousins' husbands, to the point that I would call them cousin. Grossly, a man of African descent would best fit this. But I am more complicated than my blackness, as all of us are.

Such a man who would fit into my nuclear and extended family would have to be Christian to appease my father, understanding if not a big-brother figure to my brother, attractive enough for my mother to approve of him entering the family, and able to brush off the bull slung around by my uncles and cousins.

So actually, I was never going to have that. If just by the assumption that a Christian man would not be content with my being Muslim.

In the course of this year I discovered that I have to be somewhat of a pioneer in my family in order to not end up alone, or else I will continue to watch my non-black friends marry and I will be, year after year, single.

The Wonders and Perils of being a Woman

As salaam alaikum,

I performed my first circumcision yesterday, after seeing one performed for the first time since third year medical school. The baby boy was pretty much done with me when I injected the lidocaine into his penis and screamed the rest of the time until his father found an effective way to dispense sugar water. That was at least reassuring that I had sufficiently numbed the area as he stopped crying as I made the actual incision.

My mother, of course, upon telling her the news (I get excited when I get to do procedures!) was ambivalent. Although a practicing Muslim, she wonders how necessary circumcisions actually are. I reassured her that physicians are actually using anesthetic now based on a study 20 years ago. When my brother and I were kids, they were just performing the procedure and not giving any anesthesia because it was assumed that the baby boys weren't really feeling pain.

Only one way in which the medical establishment has been less than genius.

According to my preceptor, an observational study performed a little while back demonstrated that adult men who are circumcised as adults reported feeling less sensation than they did while uncircumcised. My mind immediately drifted to FGM, and it did make me feel bad about circumcision.

That is, until one of my guy friends said, whatever, I enjoy sex anyway.

He then celebrated "winning" the conversation by making the most inappropriate comment. It was my fault...clearly walked into it.

To which I responded...whatever, man, y'all can have it...I'm just glad I'm female.

I've said it before, and then I immediately think, not that being female is at all simpler. Not at all. And I'm not talking from a social, gender perspective...I'm speaking strictly biological for a second.

When we are born, because of our mother's hormones, sometimes we bleed from our vaginas and our breasts express milk. Once our mom's hormones calm down, we go into our presumed asexual infant existence. Except, we're never entirely asexual, because infants do engage in self-stimulation postures at pretty young ages. Not anything any young parent likes to think about...the foreshadowing of your baby's sexuality.

Anyway, at base, we as females, because of our anatomy, are more prone to urinary tract infections. Baby boys with foreskin are more at risk for urinary tract infections than circumcised baby boys, but not as much as baby girls. Urinary tract infections and any potential causes of sepsis in infants is serious and requires hospitalization.

As we grow up and are little girls, we're still more prone to urinary tract infections, something that will continue until we're adult women. At least as adult women our UTIs are considered "uncomplicated" and can be treated even empirically without visiting clinic if we have them often enough. But of course, the wonders of biological womanhood do not end with infections, though it begins there.

And in many ways, it continues. Because of our anatomy, we are also more prone to sexually transmitted diseases. With the exception of men who engage in receptive anal sex, we are more likely to contract HIV, for example, than our male partner(s). While human papilloma virus, HPV, infects both men and women, women bear the brunt because of those virulent strains that can lead to cervical cancer.*

Of course, the greatest vulnerability, biologically and anatomically, are the consequences of our reproductive system. We are one of the few mammals that menstruates instead of undergoing an estrous cycle, where the lining is reabsorbed. The monthly shedding of unfertilized uterine lining, which begins when we are very young, is not painless for all of us. Some of us, myself included, have overactive prostaglandins that lead to a fair amount of inflammatory pain in our uteri and surrounding organs, making the monthly cycle painful without fair amounts of pain medication or birth control.

(I often think that women who just bleed for their period without pain complain to much about bleeding. If I could ever just bleed for menstruation, I'd probably blissfully forget I was bleeding.)

Of note, one of the wonders of not having the estrous cycle is that our sexuality as females is not restricted to those moments in the cycle when we are fertile as it is with mammals on estrous.

We also blessedly don't get to count on being assaulted by our male counterparts when we are "in heat."

Pregnancy, of course, is the greatest consequence of our reproductive system. Our anatomy is the receptive anatomy, and our gamete, the ovum, is the receptive gamete that receives the other for fertilization. Our gamete, unlike the male gamete, is with us from our own gestation. As fetuses, we have already made most all of the ova we will have.** By the time we are born, they're already declining. By the time we menstruate, we have thousands less ova than when we were born. And even as we menstruate, we lose more ova than are not fertilized each month. But they're with us all of our lives, in these bodies that we carry through triumph and tribulation, and we really don't understand the impact our decisions and our ingestions make on our gametes.

The ovum, unlike the sperm, has more cytoplasm and contains mitochondria, powerhouses necessary for aerobic energy generation in our cell. It also contains its own unique genetic material, different from what is found in the nucleus of our cells. In that way, the genetic material from mitochondria we only inherit from our mothers.

And once fertilized and implanted, because not all fertilized eggs are implanted, the female body begins a ingeniously orchestrated balance of hormone and cytokine expression that begins the symbiotic relationship between fetus and maternal body. Our scientists and physicians still do not understand how the female body does not reject in the womb what in any part of the body would be regarded as foreign material and attacked by our immune system before it could divide into a morula.

And the female body is taken through so many changes in the course of a pregnancy. So many stresses, and not just the expansion of the uterus, pushing intestines and bladder and lungs aside in favor of the growing fetus, affecting digestion, urination and breathing. So many other physiologic changes happen, importantly including the increase in fluid volume, the relaxation of the connective tissue in the body, not only in the hips, but everywhere, which is the reason why some women's nose looks different during pregnancy. The connective tissue in the feet also relax, which is why some women notice a change in shoe size after pregnancy. But the hips expand to make room for the presenting part of the fetus with impending delivery. The hormone balances that we do not entirely understand can cause morning sickness, hyperemesis gravidarum, and yes, alterations in mood.

But much more than this takes place in the body of a pregnant female. There are also risks. Pregnancy is a hypercoagulable state in which deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, the latter which could lead to death, is more common. Because of the increased fluid, women with cardiovascular disease have their systems stressed during pregnancy. All of a sudden, its not just about the anatomy and physiology of our reproductive systems. When pregnant, the entire female body comes into play in an important way to keep both female and fetus alive.

Then there are the various dangers within the reproductive unit, from the cervix to the sac to the placenta, all important for maintaining the pregnancy to term, all of which, for reasons that we don't entirely understand, can fail early and lead to preterm delivery. Diseases of placentation can lead to death of both fetus and female from bleeding.

But somehow, alhamdulillah, most pregnancies are relatively uncomplicated and carried to term.

But the perils of pregnancy are not over for the pregnant female at term. There is still labor.

Labor is something I've only experienced as an observer and practitioner. I've had the easy part of delivering babies from women who have carried them near or all 40 weeks, and then some for some women and whose bodies have undergone all of the changes, who lay before me experiencing the pain of their lives. The first pain is of the gradual decent of the fetal presenting part, which can also cause severe back pain. The next pain is that of contractions. When the presenting part gets very low, then its perineal pain. All the while still feeling the pain of contractions and back pain as baby makes its way low in the pelvis. The final primary pain I've heard women in the second stage of labor (the pushing stage!) describe is the "burning ring of fire." Especially women who opt for natural child birth feel the burning when the head is coming to crown, and then, as one woman aptly described, feel as if your "[buttocks] is being ripped apart" as the baby crowns and is born.

A baby is born, the entire reason for the female reproductive system has realized itself.

And still, the perils of pregnancy are not yet at an end!

The body takes some time to reverse from its pregnant state. Never does it revert to its pre-pregnant state. From head to toe, the female body has undergone some permanent changes. Even the hair reacts, as many women experience telogen effluvium, the loss of hair in masses which can happen after, but is not limited to, pregnancy. Right after delivery, the female body is still hypervolemic, still in that hypercoagulable state, still at risk in those ways. But the oxytocin that once drove the contractions to push baby is now the oxytocin of contracting the uterus back to size and milk let down.

The breasts have now transformed into what was for centuries the infant's only means of survival, and is still the infants best means of thriving.

The hips (and feet) remain in their relaxed state, the cervix, which expanded to 10 centimeters to allow the more-than-10-centimeter head of the baby through, will never be the same. The changes in the body make it easier for any subsequent births, as the body has motor memory and has already made its greatest expansion to accommodate the fetus.

The female body settles down from pregnancy but is never the same.

And whether the female is pregnant or delivers or not, for many the cycle continues until menopause, when the hormones that made us bleed and express milk as infants have run their course in our bodies. The hormones that protected the female body against heart disease and orchestrated the production of one or a few ova each month relent, and the reproductive system takes the rest of the female body with it into the final phase of change. The female body now is exposed to increased risk of cardiac disease, potential for osteoporosis, among other things about women's health that we are just coming to understand.

And thus, if only relegated by our anatomy, though I remain "glad" (understatement) that I'm a female, I acknowledge that it is a state of being that is not, nor has never been, simple.

And this is just speaking strictly anatomically, physiologically and pathophysiologically. This ignored most if not all social dimensions of being female, thus gender. There, it becomes even less simple.

Though explained in a dire way, what with all of the risks of disease and death, what makes us biologically female and the consequences that this small part of our bodies has on our entire bodies and, indeed, our entire beings, is perilous yes but more wondrous yet. We are powerful human beings with the capacity to carry living beings within our bodies, like our other mammalian counterparts. While both male and female components are necessary for the propagation of our species, the 40 week commitment of the female body and initial participation of the ovum, much more sparse than the male gamete in quantity and production, is absolutely integral.

And yet, like our male counterparts, we are so much more than our reproductive biology.

And so it continues...


* Once again, in men who engage in receptive anal sex, HPV can lead to anal cancer.
** Some studies are indicating that women have the capacity for gamatogenesis after birth and retain the capacity throughout their reproductive lives, which calls into question but does not definitively reverse the previous notion that women are born with all the ova they'll ever have.